Mark Shuttleworth is trying to entice OpenSUSE developers to join Ubuntu. "Novell's decision to go to great lengths to circumvent the patent framework clearly articulated in the GPL has sent shockwaves through the community. If you are an OpenSUSE developer who is concerned about the long term consequences of this pact, you may be interested in some of the events happening next week as part of the Ubuntu Open Week."

Sorry but you are wrong, I program or driver that links to GPL code makes it GPL but a GPL program or driver linking none GPL code doesn't make it GPL by magic and is legal.

This is a violation of the GPL "Spirit" but not a violation of the GPL license and the spirit ain't nothing but a poor excuse to justify the holes of the GPL license.

This is exactly right and something many people don't get. The GPL license doesn't convert the license of modules of code into GPL. The GPL license makes the whole work as a whole, open under the terms of the GPL, for those modules/classes that have a compatible license, at distribution time.

Once you start thinking about it being more about distribution, rather than linking, you get a better understanding of the GPL. Of course the GPL FAQ covers much of this.

But dynamic linking is still a gray area in the GPL. For example, if I take a pure GPL library, statically link it to some code, and then distribute it, it's pretty clear that the whole work must be made "available" under the terms of the GPL. "Available" is the key word here. But as we see with the linux kernel and video and other drivers, things aren't so simple. I've still never seen any legal precedence to "derived works" under a dynamic linking situation. And although kernel developers disagree on who is violating what, the fact is that relevant copyright holders aren't willing to test it.